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T
he world of production is chang-
ing fundamentally. The trend is
moving more and more towards
individualised products. The
small batch quantities and the large num-
ber of variants associated with this trend
demand technologies that adapt them-
selves continuously to changing condi-
tions. Flexible and networked production
systems are therefore the objective of the
activities discussed under the keyword
‘Industry 4.0’.
“The changes to the world of production
and thereby also to automation technol-
ogy should be seen as an evolutionary
process,” explains Prof. Dr. Peter Post,
Head of Corporate Research and Technol-
ogy at Festo. “In the future, functions
from the management and control levels
will be shifted to the shop floor, in some
cases even down to the level of the indi-
vidual components.” For these tasks,
decentralised intelligence is increasingly
required in the production systems in
order to actively support the production
process. The workload and capacity utili-
sation of the plant could thus be quickly
balanced out: for example, in the future
production lines could be automatically
adjusted to incoming individual customer
orders. Any failure of individual systems
or components will be immediately recog-
nised in a networked production system
and automatically compensated for by
other systems. In the future, components
will also be able to organise themselves –
they will log on to the main computer au-
tonomously via uniform interfaces, similar
to the system used by USB technology in
computers. Finally, a virtual image of the
systems supports users with quick and
easy commissioning and reconfiguration
so that it is possible to respond as quickly
and flexibly as possible to new require-
ments. All this enhances the availability
of machines and systems while simulta-
neously reducing the amount of time and
effort required for users.
Industry 4.0 is finding its way
into production
Many of Festo’s components and systems
already meet the necessary hardware and
software prerequisites for Industry 4.0.
“Currently, these are still stand-alone
solutions which are not yet networked to
any great extent. In the next stages, these
and similar components will be connected
together in complete, networked systems,”
says Prof. Post.
With the automation platform, Festo
already has a complete, consistently net-
worked component. This electrical terminal
for valve terminals not only offers an inter-
face to the field and field and management
control levels, it also has a diagnostic
capability and can take on condition mon-
itoring tasks. The CPX can be equipped
with a fully-fledged CoDeSys controller
and thus control a subordinate function or
an entire machine or a sub-process of a
system. Using the safety function, errors
can also be located quickly and modules
can be exchanged, if required.
Not only can the energy efficiency module
MSE6-E2M already measure the flow rates
in the compressed air network, it can also
evaluate the information on the spot and
initiate appropriate measures. For around
a year now, it has been successfully used
in the ice-cream production process at
Unilever (cf. p. 34 ).
2.2015
trends in automation
Impulse
14
–
15